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Political Briefing; No. 9, No. 9, No. 9? Not in Arizona

The lottery was a form of gambling found in only a few states until a quarter of a century ago. The others were too straitlaced to permit it.

But lottery fever has since swept the country and now 37 states and the District of Columbia have lotteries. The players love the whopping multi-million-dollar jackpots -- the latest Powerball prize was almost $300 million -- and state legislators love to use what is left over to finance new government goodies like schools, roads and parks.

Still, the lottery is not everybody's game. Just as opposition is beginning to build in some parts of the country to spreading numbers of electronic poker parlors and riverboat and Indian reservation casinos, in Arizona opposition to the lottery is building.

A powerful group of social conservatives in the state legislature has succeeded in forcing a statewide vote this fall on whether to keep or kill the lottery, which has been a sanctioned Arizona money game since 1981. The group argues that the get-rich-quick tease of the lottery is ultimately destructive, not just depleting paychecks and emptying bank accounts but, worse, destroying families.

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Most Arizonans want to keep their lottery, polls indicate. But its opponents are not without a case. Besides their argument that the lottery is socially destructive -- a powerful argument in a state as conservative as Arizona -- they also have the results from a recent state audit of the lottery operation.